Entrepreneurship and enterprise - Essay Example

Aileen possesses several good business skills which might be of great help. The most outstanding feature of her character is being persuasive and persistent. Without this skill, she would have left the idea without development after facing the first serious obstacle. Being active member of the Community Action Group, Aileen has showed her ability to be the team player. They have set the goal (increase the governmental involvement and responsibility for such events) and they completed the campaign successfully.

Moreover, being able to influence people using excellent oral communication skills is of great help for any entrepreneur. As it was mentioned several times in the case, she has met with the Prince of Wales and managed to receive his encouragement as well as important contacts. The ability to identify, contact and persuade the authority figures are the key skills most of the entrepreneurs lack (Maggio, 2005, p. 124). In addition, Aileen knew nothing how to start a new business and has no experience in planning and organizing.

According to Ashton (2005) the experience in management is essential for determining the success of the new business. Therefore, she needed to increase her knowledge and Aileen found advice at the local enterprise company. Being a creative person, seeing the need of people and the way to satisfy it, Aileen feels that she can change the situation with floods. Her inspiration to help people gives her the strength to bring to life this idea as well as find sufficient funding for the launching.

Funding is the first area where problems start to appear. First of all, Aileen will need to collect a lot of documents and licenses that would permit her to change the landscape of the river bank. Taking into account that government is fully responsible for the situation with the floods, the process of collecting all documents and permission might take several years and Aileen will not be able to start doing something. After receiving all of the required documents, Aileen will face another obstacle: funding.

Taking the loan at the bank is not an option in this case, because it is unclear whether or not this business will collect any revenues: Aileen has an idea to rise the riverbank in order to help the people, however, I am unsure that people suffering from floods will be willing to pay Aileen because the river is not their property and most likely they will demand the governmental funding. Moreover, she will be unable to convince the bank that she is able to run profit-driven business. In fact, it is unclear whether or not the business will generate any profit.

The organizations she is the member of are not profit-drive and therefore, she will need to prove her ability to launch the business (Bygrave, 1991, p. 17); however, the absence of experience and knowledge are working against her. Most likely she will be denied in loan granting. The only opportunities to get funds to launch the whole process are governmental grant or Social Inclusion Partnership. SIC has the objective of encouraging the public and private sectors to work together towards regeneration of the area they represent.

Usually, SIC consists of everybody who has the stake in local area: those who live there, people running enterprises, and people responsible for delivering public services. The aim of SIC is to make the living community